Thom Mayne is one of California’s most distinguished architects. The winner of the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize—the “Nobel Prize of Architecture”—Mayne is also one of the founders of the Southern Californian Institute of Architecture, and is the principal of Morphosis architecture firm.

Los Angeles [megacity or is it country]: 130 kilometers from east to west, home to a population of 18.4 million—the equivalent of Holland, twice that of Switzerland—rising from sea level to an altitude of 3,000 meters atop its highest peaks to the Northeast. In this basin lies a vast urban metropolis, a consequence of interactions, interferences, resistances, aggregates [local and global]; [LA is] an urban deviant, resistant to constraint and defiant in its individuality, a unity of density championing provocation, contingency, the non sequitur. It is possible to live and to work in both the digital and the real [practically equally]. It holds you, don’t go anywhere. It is ordinary, not familiar. The necessities— relaxation, socializing, pleasure—as a field of attractions and repulsions in all possible combinations at top speed [don’t be afraid].

Existing systems of urban complexity both ordered and unpredictable, at times extensions of their immediate site conditions, connecting multiple building types with infrastructural systems and natural ecologies [most often not].

No two things look alike—things with things [not the easiest solution]. An upside down pyramid [single site]. A churchy zone, to be repaired [outsiders have settled in their place]. A 24 hour chat room [is it straight, or is it curved—a slightly crooked space]. An official district [reality-raucous, gaudy, hooting]. Uncharted territory. A bar at the corner [a locked room]. A place for you. A dream that was later forgotten, a wasteland [absolute visual neutrality] or is it [the qualities of] unknowability?

CLIVE WILKINSON

Best known for designing the Googleplex in Silicon Valley, Clive Wilkinson is a Los Angeles-based architect and interior designer. Wilkinson was born and raised in South Africa, and trained professionally in London. Wilkinson’s designs have received over 100 awards, and since founding Clive Wilkinson Architects in 1991 his firm has completed over four million square feet of projects.

CALIFUK–The Endless Workplace

It’s no secret that Californians love London, but they also would love to correct its horrendous problems with one quick solution before surfs up. Almost every Londoner wastes about two hours a day on commuting past each other to offices in all sorts of odd corners of the metropolis.

The endless workplace proposition solves this instantly, and breaks down all business silos, by making getting to work no more taxing than climbing the stairs or shuffling into the odd elevator. This new workplace is a single layer of open office space that sits light as a feather over all the buildings in the city, and by its sheer horizontal extremity, absorbs all the City’s workplace space requirements. Access to light and views is achieved with deferential circular courtyards that look down at the sights of London and open to the sun above. With a pervasive mobile working paradigm, you are no longer stealing someone’s desk, but parking wherever feels good. Hence working anywhere means working just above your kettle and teabag collection, a short hop from the couch into the future.